Issue No. 203

AN INTRODUCTION BY CATE DICHARRY

Have you ever read a story so incisive and specific it feels like your own twisted life is right there, splayed out on the page? You know the feeling: like you might throw up a little bit because the details are so perfectly gnarled and recognizable? You’re reading along thinking, Yep, I’ve imagined making that exact prank call to a colleague in that exact fake British accent and I have imagined getting fired for it. And then, a few pages later, Oh yeah, I’ve been there, buddy, hate-pooping on my boss’s desk, ha ha ha.

This is the resonant, hysterical experience of reading Debbie Graber’s fiction. I felt it six years ago when I first encountered her work through a terrific, inventive story, the true and sober tale of Dumbo, the orphaned Disney elephant. I felt it again when I read Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday.

Here’s the thing: Graber is a master of finely-wrought satire.

This is not a small thing. The great challenge of successful satire is riding a super-fine evaluative line without descending into the ridiculous or the contemptuous. Even good satire shimmers only when it hovers just barely over the far side of reality. Too far and you have caricature. Not far enough and you have woe. Debbie Graber possesses the essential gift of a true satirist: precision. And, oh man, does she bestow it upon us, her readers, in her forthcoming debut collection.

Graber’s dominion is the workplace, and she navigates with care and rigor; she never lays it on too thick, never loses sight of the absurd, and never wavers from excoriation. The titular story is a ruthless, hilarious critique of corporate decision-making, and nonsensical professional language and culture—all punctuated with desktop defecation, a defunct band named the “Butt Gerbils,” and trenchant, playful humor. But Graber wisely comes to her material sideways by using, in this case, a trick of narrative perspective—the results of a corporate survey—to create distance from her critique. She is able, therefore, to make the derisive feel objective. This isn’t snark you’re reading. It isn’t cynicism. It is analysis. Fucking hilarious analysis.

In the end, Graber’s work is as unpredictable as her punch lines: it is warm. Her commentary is considered, never cruel. Even the subjects of her condemnation have lives and reasons and flaws, all revealed alongside unsparing examination. They are not forgiven, but they are human.

And so let it be recommended, nay, let it be urged: read Debbie Graber, and be delighted, and a little bit wicked, for it.

Cate Dicharry
Author of The Fine Art of F*cking Up, published by The Unnamed Press.

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Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday

by Debbie Graber

Recommended by The Unnamed Press

Kevin Kramer starts his new job on Monday. The executive team counts down the minutes to his arrival. The executive team is made up of four white men, one woman, and one man who claims to be a “Pacific Islander” on tax forms, but everyone knows he’s Armenian.

Kevin Kramer is exactly what the Products Profit Center needs in a senior vice president. He was groomed in corporate. According to Kevin Kramer’s impressive résumé, he worked previously for Procter and Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, and Mrs. Fields. According to the transcripts from his breakfast interviews, Kevin Kramer lives and breathes corporate.

Kevin Kramer speaks in a low baritone, softly but with authority. He talks about concepts like “tonnage” and “low-hanging fruit.” Even though 85 percent of the executives surveyed had no idea what Kevin Kramer was talking about, 100 percent of them fell in love with Kevin Kramer from his first interview.

Kevin Kramer is a pro. He always maintains eye contact. His handshake is firm, but not too firm. His hands are supple and moisture-free. One executive, after shaking Kevin Kramer’s hand, thought his fingers felt a bit rough. It turned out that Kevin Kramer played bass for years with his band, the Butt Gerbils. When they couldn’t get any gigs, they changed their name to Punkster. That executive later fantasized about Kevin Kramer playing “Stairway to Heaven” onstage with Robert Plant. She thought about Kevin Kramer touching her with his rough, bass-hardened fingertips, and she came harder than she had in months.

Kevin Kramer says, “Leaders aren’t afraid to hurt people’s feelings in the best interests of the company. Leaders have no problems dispensing justice swiftly. Leaders never lose sleep at night. I sleep like a baby.” This is why Kevin Kramer starts on Monday.

The executive team cheers when they see Kevin Kramer drive his navy-blue BMW into the parking lot Monday morning. One executive says, “Let the hammer fall. Godspeed.”

This executive never washes his hands after visiting the men’s room. He also refuses to say thank you when someone holds the door to the patio open for him, unless that person is another executive or that sexy Indian girl in software.

When Kevin Kramer starts on Monday, he parks in his own parking space, with his name in bold on a placard. No one else in the company has ever had their own personally designated parking space, not even the CEO. Eighty percent of employees surveyed complained about the lack of parking. Kevin Kramer realizes that many in the company will be angered by this change to the parking space policy.

But Kevin Kramer refused to take the position of senior vice president unless he could be assured of his own parking space, and the executives agreed to his demand, provided that they too would receive their own parking spaces. The executives also tabled the plan to build a new parking garage for everyone else until 2020.

On Monday, HR sends out an e-mail explaining the new parking space policy. So as not to single out Kevin Kramer, the e-mail mentions the others who are important enough to get their own spaces. One executive says, “It’s about fucking time!”

This executive used the word fuck as much as possible, because he liked to think of himself as Tony Soprano, if Tony Soprano had been born in St. Louis and became a CPA.

Kevin Kramer has been hired to put new corporate efficiencies into place. Kevin Kramer makes these efficiencies up during meetings. He does his best work under pressure.

Kevin Kramer starts on Monday because the executives decided the company needed a paradigm shift. The CEO Jon Goldfarb had become too involved with everyday operations. He was a nice guy, but an egghead. He was socially awkward with clients at hockey games and other events that were supposed to be fun, not painful.

According to a survey, 72 percent of clients characterized Jon Goldfarb as “annoying.” One client wrote on the comment section of the survey, “Can someone please teach Jon Goldfarb the fundamentals of baseball so he can stop quoting actuarial tables when the bases are loaded in the bottom of the ninth?”

The executives also decided that Jon Goldfarb was too big of a softie to get rid of dead weight, and as a result, unproductive employees had been hanging on to their jobs for years. These employees did zero work while gobbling up health benefits and overtime and accumulated paid time off. The executives hoped that the new senior vice president would fire the employees doing their jobs poorly. The executives also wanted the senior vice president to bring a hipper vibe to the company, making it more “relevant” and “twenty-first century,” which 56 percent of surveyed clients indicated were desirable traits for their payroll company to have.

Kevin Kramer is a tough negotiator. He told Jon Goldfarb during his breakfast interview, “Your company is in the toilet. The competition wants to bury you, and while you waver trying to make a decision, they will hire me. And then I will bury you.”

Jon Goldfarb sipped his coffee and pushed his eggs around his plate. He personally found Kevin Kramer to be kind of an asshole, but he had read the survey that indicated 100 percent of the executives believed he was “the guy,” so he offered him the job. This is why Kevin Kramer gets whatever he desires.

Kevin Kramer’s office is new. Architects were hired to build his new office out of a corner office and a neighboring file room. The burliest members of the facilities department were offered overtime to spend a weekend moving the files out of the file room. When a few smaller employees complained that they were being discriminated against due to their size, HR arranged for everyone in facilities to receive Subway coupons. That shut everyone up.

Kevin Kramer is introduced around the Products Profit Center on Monday morning. He meets Judy, a hefty woman with white hair who is in charge of user acceptance testing. Judy has been an employee at the company for twenty years. Her passion is not user acceptance testing, but “Judy’s Corner,” a column in the company newsletter. “Judy’s Corner” is filled with employee anecdotes and upbeat sayings that allude to Jesus Christ.

It is company policy that all religions are tolerated, even religions that 79 percent of surveyed employees considered “weird.” Because of this and because of all the new employees in software development recently outsourced from a company in India, Judy has been told to steer clear of Jesus in her column. She sometimes reprints Family Circus cartoons when she’s out of ideas.

Kevin Kramer says, “It’s a pleasure to meet the famous Judy.” He was given the latest issue of the newsletter at his breakfast interview. He read it while taking a dump that Monday morning at home.

Judy beams, saying, “Kevin, I want to include a personal story from you for the ‘Corner’ this month,” to which Kevin Kramer replies, “I’d be happy to.” But later that Monday, Judy receives an e-mail from HR, telling her that unless she takes the early retirement package offered her, she risks losing all her benefits. By the end of the day, she is gone.

Forty-seven percent of employees surveyed thought the company newsletter was “pointless.” Thirty-six percent thought it was “heartwarming,” “a great way to stay abreast of employee happenings,” and “the only way to find out if any retired employees had died.”

The executive team had plans to revamp the newsletter into an interactive website, but they never got to that item on the agenda during their offsite planning session at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Getting rid of Judy is just another reason the executives are happy to see Kevin Kramer in his new corner office, standing on his eight-hundred-dollar Aeron chair.